Building Custom Django Fields

I recently needed to implement a special kind of field in Django Rest Framework that turned out to be a fun experiment. It includes per-request-format representation and altering how relationships are represented.

Python Version and Dependency Management

My understanding of the Python ecosystem of version and dependency management tools

Developing on Windows Using WSL 2

My thoughts on trying to set up a Windows 10 development environment for Python based on WSL 2.

2019 Year In Review

Taking a look back at the work I did and experiences I had in 2019

Remapping Linux Modifiers with XKB

Switching to Linux from MacOS can mean relearning key bindings. To make this easier I decided to remap my modifier keys to allow me to continue using MacOS bindings in certain cirumstances. I quickly learned that it is not always easy to make these remappings, though.

Pattern Matching CLI commands with Rust

I’m building a CLI tool using Rust, and I ran into some difficulties figuring out the best way to work with the structopts crate using subcommands to break out my logic into separate functions. I suspect this is because I am new to Rust, but I felt it was worth documenting the challenge and solution. I’ll use a fake tool to demonstrate the pattern I used. Let’s say the tool is called ecko, and it is used to print two different kinds of messages: hellos and goodbyes.

Remote Time Zones Post Mortem

I finished my time working from Australia on May 10, making it just over three months of that I spent working from a siginificantly different (8+ hours) time zone than many of my coworkers. In my last post discussing this topic, I covered some of the pain points this time difference created, and I would like to discuss what worked well for me and what might have been better during that time.

GraphQL Server Built on Ktor

Disclaimer: I do not use Kotlin professionally, and I am learning the language and tools by building something and sharing my experiences here. This application is not production ready and is missing crucial pieces, like production-ready error handling. Please review and understand any code before reusing it, and feel free to leave comments on the GitHub project With authentication in place on the Ktor server, we can move on to building out the skeleton of the GraphQL server, incorporating the authenticated user.

Creating Custom Database Connections in Lumen

A friend recently came to me with a question on how to create a database connection in Lumen without using using external services to define the configuration values of the connection. I made some suggestions, but it was an interesting quesiton so I decided to try tackling a sample myself as well. I am not suggesting that the pattern described below for retrieving configuration values is a good idea. However, sometimes as developers we are required to work within certain constraints we cannot control.

Social Authentication with Ktor

As I continue to explore Kotlin as a server-side web development language and get experience with the available tools in that realm, I plan to build out a simple application, testing out a number of different tools and patterns. The application will be a GraphQL server for a collaborative To Do list (sounds familiar, am I right?), running on Ktor.